John Phipps: Have Chinese Investors Stolen American Agriculture?By U.S. FARM REPORT August 2, 2021
Recently, reporters at website Politico, offered this ominous observation.
“Chinese firms have expanded their presence in American agriculture over the last decade by snapping up farmland and purchasing major agribusinesses, like pork processing giant Smithfield Foods. By the start of 2020, Chinese owners controlled about 192,000 agricultural acres in the U.S., worth $1.9 billion, including land used for farming, ranching and forestry, according to the Agriculture Department.”
This is simply bad reportage. While 192,000 acres seems like big number it begs for some context. Digging down into the source report from the ERS, we discover that while Chinese investors, not the government, have increased their ag holdings, the large majority is “other agriculture land”. I tried semi-hard to find a definition for this category, and the best I can tell you is what it isn’t: cropland, pasture, or forest. Zooming in on cropland, which is what most farmers care about, Chinese investors own measly 33,000 acres. But how about those Canadians, eh? Or compare China to Germany. Chinese-owned cropland numbers are roughly similar to Denmark, and I don’t see Congress obsessed about a Viking raid.
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Source:
https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/john-phipps-have-chinese-investors-stolen-american-agriculture